November 12, 2026
On the Thursday of its soft launch in early September, about 200 people showed up at the tip of Henderson Point within 10 minutes. Some came by car and some came by boat. Thomas Genin has opened plenty of businesses in South Mississippi, and he told the Sun Herald he had never seen anything like it. More than 800 people a day stopped by that first weekend. Genin counted over 100 boats coming and going off the pier on both days.
The boat count is the useful number. Tiger Beach sits at 103 W. Bayview Ave., at the western end of Harrison County where the Pass Christian side meets the Bay of St. Louis. It was planned as a place you arrive at by water as easily as by Highway 90. Before Hurricane Katrina, that is how the point worked. People from the Pass and people from the Bay met there.
Longtime Pass Christian residents don't need Annie's explained. For everyone else, a 2023 Sun Herald history of the restaurant describes it. Every dining room had a fireplace. It had wagon-wheel chandeliers and hand-carved duck decoys, and live music played inside. Large bells in the garden rang out for birthdays, engagements and anniversaries. Annie's survived a fire in 1972. It survived a van crashing into the dining room in 1980. It did not survive Katrina. The restaurant never reopened and was demolished, and much of Henderson Point sat vacant for years afterward.
Genin knows that history firsthand. He worked at Annie's picking seafood while he was still in high school. He went back there to work after leaving Emeril's in New Orleans. In September he told the Sun Herald what the point used to have. There was a marina, a boat shed, a restaurant, a bar and a convenience store. After the storm, he said, the area had nothing.
"Before Katrina Henderson Point was as busy as any other place on the Coast."
Tiger Beach came 21 years after the storm cleared the site. The Sun Herald's spring preview called it the first business to open on Henderson Point since Katrina.
The order in which things got built shows what Tiger Beach is for. Genin told the Sun Herald that his first permit there was to remove the rocks on the property, and it took a long time to get. Without that permit, he said, "There would have been no beach." The whole project took more than four years.
The site covers more than three acres. It faces the eastern shore of the Bay of St. Louis and sits beside Mallini Bayou. At the September launch, most of what was open served boaters first:
The food was planned the same way. At Sails, the casual restaurant on site, customers scan a menu and order and pay from their table or their boat slip. The "boat bites" include a boat burger that comes wrapped and ready to go, a blackened jerk chicken sandwich with pineapple pico, a chicken club wrap, a pier foot-long dog and chilled peel-and-eat red shrimp. The lighter "boat snacks" are chips and salsa, smoked tuna dip, cantina wings, chicken tenders and Greek pasta salad. Genin compared the food and the feel to a little beach hut in the Bahamas and to the Flora-Bama. The bar has seating on different levels above the boat traffic. Some of it is wide open, and some is set aside as semi-private space for groups.
WXXV put the location in a phrase that matters on this side of the bridge. It called the site "the Harrison County side of the Bay of St. Louis." For a Pass Christian household with a boat, that puts the newest waterfront stop on the bay within reach without crossing into Hancock County.
Genin has described Henderson Point by its position more than its address. He told the Sun Herald it sits halfway between Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis, and that people from both places always met there. Tiger Beach is built as an extension of The Blind Tiger, his original restaurant on the bay in Bay St. Louis. The two sit 1.8 miles apart across the water.
The plan includes a link between them across the bay. Genin has announced a "shark-a-taxi," a boat with jaws, to carry customers between Bay St. Louis and Henderson Point. The idea is that people can enjoy the food and drinks at both places without driving. Before Katrina, people crossed the water to meet on the point. The taxi would bring that back with a schedule and a fare.
The building has more planned too. At the September opening, an elevator tower was still under construction. Salt Fire, a dining room on the building's top floor, was set to follow it. The plan had the bar opening at 3 p.m. and dinner with sunset views starting at 5 p.m. The menu would be more upscale, with grilled meats and seafood, fresh vegetables and salsa. WLOX reported in early September that the upstairs restaurant was due to be finished in about 60 days. Genin has called the whole site a long-term project. "This is something I'll probably develop and expand for the next three to five years," he told the Sun Herald in April.
Hours change with the season and the site is still growing, so check Tiger Beach on Facebook for the current schedule before you head west on a Saturday.
The City of Pass Christian lists a Winter Concert Series on Scenic Drive on three Saturdays from mid-November through the end of January. A Friday night downtown for Christmas in the Pass falls between them. Henderson Point is a short drive west of downtown on any of these dates:
The Blind Tiger is just across the water from Henderson Point, so the November 28 event in Bay St. Louis belongs on a Pass Christian calendar this year. Under the plan Genin has described, the two restaurants form one destination split across the bay, with a boat running between them.
The point sat empty for more than 20 years while the downtowns on either side came back. That changed when the rocks came off the shoreline and the slips and fuel dock opened. Genin's goal is to rebuild the stop Annie's and the old marina once made, at the place where the two towns meet.
At HL Raymond Properties, we love seeing this side of the bay come back, from the Pass harbor to Henderson Point and across the water to Old Town Bay St. Louis. If a place you can reach by boat is part of how you picture Gulf Coast weekends, our team knows these waterfronts well, and we'd be glad to help you Discover Gulf Coast Living from the water.
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